Simmons SDS8

A kit built around the drummer

In April 1984, Warren Cann reported on two new Simmons systems he had sought out at Frankfurt. The SDS7 offered a modular mixture of analogue and digital sound. The SDS8 put five analogue channels into one fixed controller: bass, snare and three toms. It gave a drummer a complete electronic kit with a much smaller claim on the budget. Cann listed the basic package at £675 before VAT. His account places the SDS8 in public view that spring, with the pads and controller treated as one performing instrument.

Warren Cann, April 1984 — SDS8 report ↗

Two sounds beneath each stick

The factory manual gives each channel two states: a prepared sound and a sound set by the player. The channel switch moves between them; the master switch or footswitch changes all five together. Everard found that a mixed selection reverses when the pedal is pressed. Two factory voices and three user voices become two user voices and three factory voices.

That is a useful performance gesture. A drummer can prepare a contrast, then bring it into a phrase without putting down the sticks. The five pads remain in the same places while the selected sounds change.

Operating instructions, PDF page 7 — Presets ↗ · Chris Everard, June 1984 — In Control ↗

A different surface under the sticks

Chris Everard paid close attention to the new rubber-covered pads in his June review. For a player combining Simmons toms with acoustic drums, he thought the softer surface made the transition between the two easier. His account makes the kit more than a set of electronic voices: the response beneath a stick was part of the instrument.

He also described changing a tom's pitch control while playing it, extending the apparent size of the kit in an overdub. The controller could be another performing surface, within reach of the drummer.

Chris Everard, June 1984 — Pad It Out and In Control ↗

Shape the voice, place it in the room

The manual explains sound design through pitch, noise brightness, tone/noise balance, bend, attack click and decay. It encourages players to make sounds they like rather than reproduce acoustic drums.

Its recording chapter offers individual channel outputs, a stereo connection and a mono mix. The stereo signal uses one stereo jack; the individual outputs have preset levels independent of the channel volume controls. Those details matter at a mixing desk: the controls used to balance the kit are not necessarily controlling the separate feeds.

Operating instructions, PDF pages 6 and 8 — Programming Sounds; Amplifying and Recording ↗

Long after the first kit photograph

The later records give the SDS8 several different lives. The credits accompanying Munch's Tree reissue place both an SDS7 and an SDS8 in the equipment used at T23 studio in Kristiansand for recordings from 1986 to 1991. That is a studio inventory, with two Simmons systems in the room; it leaves their individual parts unidentified.

In 2017, Jeremy Greenspan and Ryan Smith, working as Taraval, included an SDS8 in the hardware list for their joint release. They describe long real-time performances with sequencers, edited into the five released pieces, with no overdubs. The kit's name sits beside an ARP Odyssey, Roland synthesizers and a DSI Tempest. Here the attraction is the session as a whole: instruments running together, and a finished record shaped from what happened between the players. The listening links and retained recording accounts open those later rooms beyond the original sales photograph.

Munch — Tree, recording credits ↗ · Greenspan and Taraval — release notes ↗

Beyond the pads

Cann also described connecting the SDS8 to the separate SDS6 sequencer. The five-channel controller could therefore belong to a sequenced system as well as a drummer’s kit. That distinction matters: the SDS8 itself was not an onboard pattern programmer. Everard’s June review quoted approximately £776 including VAT for the kit, alongside Cann’s earlier £675 before VAT. Those prices describe the British reports, rather than every market.

Warren Cann — SDS8 system and price ↗ · Chris Everard — June price ↗